Jeff Ha wrote:Companies like Foundry, Adobe, SideFX and Pixologic have a huge online presence, broadcasting webinars and live sessions through partner artists/studios through Youtube and Twitch. Even Boris/Mocha has more updated content than Blackmagic.

Part of the problem could stem from the fact that BMD seems to consider themselves a hardware company first, and oh by the way, they developed some software but are leaving it up to the users to figure out what they want to use it for. By not really publically committing to their software, it leaves people sticking with their tools.

I agree with this 100%. I do subscribe to the broadcasted webinars/live sessions those companies provide. They usually have the recorded video posted a few days later. I think this is a great way to go over new features and proper workflows, in general. It's also a great way to feed your online audience and maintain a presence.

I thoroughly enjoyed a webinar that Rony Soussan did for Moviola while he was with BMD, I believe it was some kind of intro to Fusion but included some nice pro tips and shortcuts. The information was posted here on the forums which is how I found out about it. Very informative and originally got me to pay attention to Fusion. BMD should really figure out a way to do more of this with Fusion.

alan bovine wrote:SupportSupport is a potential revenue, not exclusively a cost, it doesn't mean "show me how to do things", but rather something to utilze when you need it the most, and documentation isn't covering the ground. I'm not alone by wanting to pay more if it included support for things like :

* Acknowledging and fixing bugs with higher frequency.* Access to developers / support team for implementing Fusion into a larger pipeline.* Guaranteed bug fixes and updates yearly.* Bi-directional dialogue to users/studios about users actual needs vs "We did something; we hope someone uses it"* Warning about EOL / Transition / Grace period between products or just licensing options for EOL products.

In the current state; its impossible to plan/invest/know if Fusion even exists in 10 months, who knows. Support provides if nothing else a sense of security for our investments. And by "our investments" I mean the time we spend building infrastructure, internal training and tools for Fusion.

On the money.

Funny thing is with Resolve some of this seems to happen, but Fusion either has been deliberatly moved to the backburner or needs a new Product Manager. I am have tempted to start asking Peter Chamberlain Fusion quesions on the Resolve forum as we may now start getting some answers.

It feels like BM don't understand what they have with Fusion, on most of the projects I work on there is more time spent on VFX than editing and grading combined. At the studio I used to work at there were more Nuke licenses than any other software, 3D guys used it, Comp guys used it, the Colorists used it. They only needed a handful of licenses for ediitng and grading and over a hundred for Nuke. I also remember a colleague suggesting a really useful interface change to Nuke that showed up 4 weeks later.

I would easily pay $500+ a year for Fusion that met the abover criteria on the premise alone that the bugs I encounter now are costing me more than ths is productivity. I really wish they would show some more faith in Fusion.

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:VideoCopilot, Greyscale Gorilla, The Pixel Lab, Hello Luxx, all those guys sell products and the tutorials are the way to incentivize users to become customers.

I'm not familiar with the origins of the others, but Video Copilot wasn't a product company in the beginning. The products came after there was an audience for them. It was Andrew working for a living and posting tutorials on the side. I mention this because when people talk about incentive, it tends to be in a short term perspective. Unless you win the lottery, that rarely happens.

Sites like VC build a user base over a long period of time by following the standard rules of social media. Create high quality content for a targeted audience and release it on a predictable schedule. He followed those rules to become a recognized authority on AE, which was a benefit to his career. When he built up a sufficient following, he started creating products. That's essentially Web 101.

If you follow those rules and work hard week after week, eventually you'll have an audience that you can then consider monetizing, but there's no overnight success. I think one of the reasons Fusion doesn't have an Andrew Kramer is that no one is willing to make the same long term investment in building an audience.

Fusion's place in the market is somewhat chicken and egg in this context. If someone put in that level of effort and created the same kind of quality (and entertaining) content for Fusion, they'd build an audience. Even though it's small now, Fusion's market share would most assuredly increase as a result. A rising tide and all that.

There's plenty of incentive out there. It's just a matter of having long term vision and a willingness to work hard to bring it to life.

I think one of the reasons Fusion doesn't have an Andrew Kramer is that no one is willing to make the same long term investment in building an audience.

And this is - partly - as I've said earlier, because there is no long term commitment from BMD to make it worthwhile to take that leap. (this is not exclusive to BMD of course - Shake went the way of the dodo after Apple got everything out of it that it needed and let's not mention the demise of Softimage).If you're not sure that there will be a software to create tutorials for, then it's a big risk to take.

Chris Duncan wrote:There's plenty of incentive out there. It's just a matter of having long term vision and a willingness to work hard to bring it to life.

I'm not so sure nowadays. Keep in mind that when Andrew Kramer started VCP, it was relatively early days for the internet and YouTube (2005 I think). There was really no competition and no business model.

My point is that there has to be an incentive right now, not 10-15 years down the line, that is unsustainable (unless you make aged Scotch). From time to time I create Resolve tutorials, but my incentive is not monetization which is why they are few and far between, and I'm not particularly good at it.

If the community won't spontaneously contribute quality tutorials for Fusion, then Blackmagic should IMHO create an incentive by either paying creators for quality tutorials (in the same way that Lynda.com or Pluralsight does), or create their own.

Having said that, I do suspect that Fusion is about to become a lot more popular now that it's part of Resolve. Already Fusion tutorials are popping up on YouTube channels that have, until now, mostly been dedicated to color grading. One example is this:

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:Having said that, I do suspect that Fusion is about to become a lot more popular now that it's part of Resolve.

Yeah, that's why I'm enthusiastic about 15. There will be certainly growing pains as they get the embedded / standalone concepts sorted out but Fusion is about to step onto a much larger stage. The more popular something is, the more resources there are.

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:Having said that, I do suspect that Fusion is about to become a lot more popular now that it's part of Resolve.

Yeah, that's why I'm enthusiastic about 15. There will be certainly growing pains as they get the embedded / standalone concepts sorted out but Fusion is about to step onto a much larger stage. The more popular something is, the more resources there are.

I remain skeptical. If it takes 2-3 cycles for Resolve Fusion to work properly and with speed, people may not really care its there and rely on their existing tools. When products become so bloated it's a hindrance, that's not a good thing.

In the near term, we'll see 5 minute tutorials about titling and roto as a majority of Resolve users are probably Editors and Colorists.

*IF* Resolve Fusion is being used in this hodge podge sort of way that Grant mentioned, that doesn't promote Fusion standalone, not really. Grant said having all of your tools in one app is the way it should be, versus separate apps for specific tasks (paraphrasing of course). Since there apparently is still a standalone Fusion, the optics in his statement was pretty bad which doesn't help promote Fusion. That needs to change in order for more people to adopt Fusion.

This. ReFusion might suck right now. That's fine. Just tell us what the plan is. If Grant said "Hey, here's something we're trying out to help Fusion users get faster turnaround when using Resolve, it's a work in progress but we're really excited about how far this has come so far and we think there's a good workflow options to explore" that would be fine. But telling people "Fusion is fully integrated" and then have it not be fully integrated says that either you're redefining what Fusion is as a product or you don't know what you're doing.

Grant said having all of your tools in one app is the way it should be, versus separate apps for specific tasks

Maybe to put this in perspective, someone should do a mockup of a 4K shoulder camera that can be used as a filmscanner, while liveswitching a soccer match, that can also be used as a format converter and when plugged in into a wall socket will make perfect lattes.

If it's not a good idea for their hardware line-up, then why would putting all software into one package be different?

Grant said having all of your tools in one app is the way it should be, versus separate apps for specific tasks

Maybe to put this in perspective, someone should do a mockup of a 4K shoulder camera that can be used as a filmscanner, while liveswitching a soccer match, that can also be used as a format converter and when plugged in into a wall socket will make perfect lattes.

If it's not a good idea for their hardware line-up, then why would putting all software into one package be different?

As someone else pointed out earlier, 99% of the functionality in apps these days is in dlls (or the Mac equivalent). A flimscanner and camera obviously can't load a virtual component to make a latte. In software, it's trivial.

I have no doubt there will be initial growing pains as they sort things out, but here's the part I don't really understand. When they get things settled down, if 100% of standalone Fusion functionality is provided in a good UI via Resolve, why is that worse than a standalone app?

There seems to be a lot of assumptions floating around, with people jumping to the conclusion that an integrated environment means lots of bolt on components of inferior quality. Not only is it pretty early to be declaring the effort total crap, personally I don't agree with the premise.

I work all day in Visual Studio to do Microsoft development. I remember the 80s, when I had to use this editor, plus that debugger, plus this compiler, a makefile, lots of batch files, lots of other specialized tools. Visual Studio is referred to as an IDE (thanks to Borland for those who remember), which means Integrated Development Environment. I have lots of powerful, best of breed tools in one app. I don't miss the old days. Not even a little.

Sure, they could completely botch this. But they haven't even released it yet and people have already decided that it sucks. Seems kinda harsh to me.

Chris Duncan wrote:As someone else pointed out earlier, 99% of the functionality in apps these days is in dlls (or the Mac equivalent). A flimscanner and camera obviously can't load a virtual component to make a latte. In software, it's trivial.

Eh, no. Not if they're mutually exclusive. The resources available to the software are constrained. That's hardware, after all. If a.dll says to set pixel 0,0 to white and b.dll says to set pixel 0,0 to black, you're stuck.

Given an infinite amount of hardware, your statement might be true. I don't study theoretical computer science, so I don't have proof.

Chris Duncan wrote:I have no doubt there will be initial growing pains as they sort things out, but here's the part I don't really understand. When they get things settled down, if 100% of standalone Fusion functionality is provided in a good UI via Resolve, why is that worse than a standalone app?

Because it's mutually exclusive. You can't get to 100% without significant compromises. Further, there's diminishing returns. BMD might decide that being 70% as good while only being 15% slower is good enough.

You're right that *some* integration can be beneficial as in your Visual Studio Example.But would you be fine with it if Visual Studio's next version came with a Midi composer, a spreadsheet, powerpoint creator and a CAD tool?

If you put stuff into one package, it's not unexpected that various visual elements of the package will have to be unified in appearance. But what's good UI design for an editor is not necessarily useful for a compositor, so if you have to create a completeley seperate UI that you switch to, what are the upsides to integrating it anymore?

Sander de Regt wrote:But would you be fine with it if Visual Studio's next version came with a Midi composer, a spreadsheet, powerpoint creator and a CAD tool?

Since I design and create software for a living, I think you make a particularly good point about different UI styles. Your example about VS (which, sadly, is lacking a good latte interface) also brings up some relevant thoughts.

I think it's the Integration part of IDE that's the key to these considerations. A CAD tool might be useful in VS to build models I use in my app. Midi, spreadsheet and power point, not so much. On the other hand, I'd love it if I didn't have to leave Word to get to Excel or Power Point. I don't see the value in them being separate apps since they're all logically related.

Cubase (my DAW of choice these days), on the other hand, manages audio files but also has a midi composer with several different UIs as well as a sheet music writing tool. The sheet music UI isn't of much use to me when I'm mixing a song, but it interacts with the Midi data, which in turn creates audio that I mix. Even though these are all very different user interfaces, I very much like having them all together because of the I. All of those features interact in some significant way. Back in the day, when all DAWs had very limited Midi functionality, I had to use Cakewalk for Midi and then the DAW for other audio. It was a pain in the posterior. Having that all integrated in a modern DAW is awesome.

I think a DAW is a good analogy to where Resolve is going. What started as a best of breed colorist's tool expanded to include an NLE. Then they added Fairlight for pro audio. Now they're bringing in Fusion. All of these aspects meet my criteria for the big I. They're all related aspects of film and video production and interact with each other, so a unified interface makes sense to me.

Of course, the caveat is, "if it's done well." A bad integration of good tools is still a bad product. The same goes for bolting on inferior aftermarket parts to your shiny new hot rod. And this is where, respectfully, I disagree with a lot of the negativity I see about this. Perhaps it's because I know what it's like on the developer's side of the street but my reaction to all of this is geez, give the guys a chance. If they do crappy work, pounce on them then. People are assuming there's no possible way they could do a good job of this, and I don't believe that's a given.

It's also worth noting past efforts. The first cut of their NLE was very useful. The chatter was all about yeah, but FCP does this and Premeire does that, and Resolve is way behind. That's fair. But it was 1.0, and they've continually improved it.

Also, and this is particularly relevant to Fusion, they wrote the NLE from scratch. Fusion already exists, most of it in dlls, lattes notwithstanding. They don't have to reinvent the wheel. The just have to put it on another car. And because of the big I, that gives everyone more flexibility. Not a colorist or editor? I can dig it. I can read music, but I came up playing rock, and printed scores are of little use in a typical band. So I don't always need it. When I do, it's there, and it's good. When I don't, it's just a menu entry. It's not like it's in the way.

No matter how good a job they do of bringing in Fusion, I promise you they're going to screw some things up or, more likely, omit doing something in a certain way that a lot of people feel is important. That's not BMD holding up the social finger to the VFX guys. That's about deadlines. You guys all know something about that. It might take a few patches, but they'll get it cleaned up.

When it's all said and done, everyone gets the big I. If you don't need a feature, don't click on the menu. If you do, having all aspects of film production playing nice with each other in a single app is a very good and powerful thing.

I say give these guys a chance to show you what they can do. No programmer ever gets up in the morning and says you know, I think today I'll just write a crappy app. We're every bit as passionate about our work as you are with yours, and we face the same arbitrary deadlines and other dilemmas as you do.

By the way, I really enjoy the fact that I can speak contrary to the general consensus here and yet still have a friendly conversation about it with everyone. It's a pretty cool community.

Chris Duncan wrote:No programmer ever gets up in the morning and says you know, I think today I'll just write a crappy app.

But the issue isn't the programmers. I'm 100% sure not a single one of them said "Hey, I have an idea, let's make it blue".

Likewise, none of the hardware engineers said "Hey, I have an idea, let's put a cupholder on top of the camera."

Someone is making design decisions and saying "Here's what's going to happen, we're going to put Fusion in a page in Resolve, but we're not going to move any of the tools from the Color page over to the Fusion page, we're just going to force users into a single order-of-operations that I just decided right now. Also make it blue. Oh, and to ensure we get users to migrate to our new licensing system, we're going to uninstall the non-beta release including the database with their production projects on it. Also, don't worry about the online help, it's only a public beta with tens of thousands of new users."

If it were up to the programmers, the release notes might include to-do's. But they don't, so users have to come on the forum and ask around to try and figure out if a feature is broken, yet-to-be-implemented, or not planned for this release. It might sound like users are complaining to the programmers, but for the most part they're complaining to the designers. The lack of a bug reporting mechanism at BDP just makes it seem like there's a lot of complaining to the programmers because bugs aren't submitted in an orderly fashion.

It's easy for users to say "I click on this button and the application crashes" or "When the input values are negative, the output is #QNAN". It's hard for users to say "I don't think ResolveFX should be a thing anymore" while other users argue back "ResolveFX is awesome, why aren't Fusion tools in the Color page?"

You're right that *some* integration can be beneficial as in your Visual Studio Example.But would you be fine with it if Visual Studio's next version came with a Midi composer, a spreadsheet, powerpoint creator and a CAD tool?

That analogy is very flawed, since you're naming major features that have nothing to do with the core use of an IDE, while BMD is integrating features that are very closely related. It's all things that are major parts of the film workflow.

If you put stuff into one package, it's not unexpected that various visual elements of the package will have to be unified in appearance. But what's good UI design for an editor is not necessarily useful for a compositor, so if you have to create a completeley seperate UI that you switch to, what are the upsides to integrating it anymore?

That's precisely whey BMD made a dedicated page for Fusion. It DOES have its own UI that's optimized for it. The integration is surprisingly well thought out given how early in the development process it is.

On top of that, BMD is asking for feedback in order to make it better. "Here it is, we have no idea whether or not it will work for you, so try it out and tell us what does and doesn't work so that we can fix and/or improve it."

As far as the up side... that should be blindingly, glaringly obvious. If it isn't, try conforming a big Premiere project in Resolve, and then compare that level of effort to "conforming" a huge edit done in Resolve to... Resolve.

But that's where the conflict is. Without user studies, it's just my opinion vs yours. I think the GUI is far worse than what exists in Fusion 7 or 9. It's bulky and has too little "active" area and isn't configurable. I have no idea why there even is a new GUI at all. It's something that introduces additional technical issues, creates friction for migration, and doesn't introduce any beneficial features. If that's changing moving forward, fine, BDP should let us know that so we can either put it aside or contribute to the discussion.

Chad Capeland wrote:But that's where the conflict is. Without user studies, it's just my opinion vs yours. I think the GUI is far worse than what exists in Fusion 7 or 9. It's bulky and has too little "active" area and isn't configurable. I have no idea why there even is a new GUI at all. It's something that introduces additional technical issues, creates friction for migration, and doesn't introduce any beneficial features. If that's changing moving forward, fine, BDP should let us know that so we can either put it aside or contribute to the discussion.

The UI is nearly identical to the one in Fusion 9; the main difference is that the icons look nicer and you can turn on a timeline. The rest is actually the same, but it's also in an open beta so that BMD can get feedback from users with which to improve the interface.

And it DOES introduce beneficial features... it gives Fusion access to audio and a timeline.

Um… it's nothing like the one in Fusion 9. Fusion lets you open any number of floating frames into which you can place whichever View you want. You can split frames, add tabs, resize arbitrarily, send any frame to full screen. It's incredibly flexible. You can even completely reskin it if you know what you're doing.

Bryan Ray wrote:Um… it's nothing like the one in Fusion 9. Fusion lets you open any number of floating frames into which you can place whichever View you want. You can split frames, add tabs, resize arbitrarily, send any frame to full screen. It's incredibly flexible. You can even completely reskin it if you know what you're doing.

Resolve's UI is unaccommodating in comparison.

Reskinning probably won't happen, but based on what the BMD product management folks have said, they planning for feature parity by the end of the beta.

You DO realize that this is a beta, right? Rather than complain, go and ask for what you feel is missing in the beta forum; that's what it's there for. BMD is listening. That's why BMD is also winning.

What makes you think I haven't? I very nearly quoted myself from the beta forum.

I know it's a beta, and more to the point, it's a beta that was rushed through production in a ridiculously short time span. But we need to learn to call a spade a spade: Resolve can stand to learn a few things from Fusion's UI. I doubt they'll fully satisfy my desires, but as long as they at least move toward what I find usable, I'll be happy.

This isn't just complaining for complaining's sake. I've got a huge stake in helping to make Fusion in Resolve the absolute best it can be. That stake isn't served by lying to myself and others about where improvement is needed.

Bryan Ray wrote:What makes you think I haven't? I very nearly quoted myself from the beta forum.

It's the way you're saying it. It sounds like you're basically complaining, even though we all know that BMD wants to know what everyone using its software thinks of it.

I know it's a beta, and more to the point, it's a beta that was rushed through production in a ridiculously short time span.

That's not really true. BMD has been saying that it's 1/3 of the way through what the product management team predicted would be an 18 month project. The beta isn't there because it's rushed, it's there because it's working well enough to get feedback.

But we need to learn to call a spade a spade: Resolve can stand to learn a few things from Fusion's UI. I doubt they'll fully satisfy my desires, but as long as they at least move toward what I find usable, I'll be happy.

Since I suspect that a LOT of people will want the same thing, you may well end up getting what you want. I rarely use floating windows in Fusion, so I'd entirely forgotten that it had them... so I didn't try it on the show floor.

This isn't just complaining for complaining's sake. I've got a huge stake in helping to make Fusion in Resolve the absolute best it can be. That stake isn't served by lying to myself and others about where improvement is needed.

If BMD had a reputation for not paying attention, it would be justified. Since there is so much stuff new in Resolve that is clearly based on user requests and feedback, it's silly.

Rakesh Malik wrote:based on what the BMD product management folks have said, they planning for feature parity by the end of the beta.

Have they said that officially?

Because it seems really, really strange that they would release a beta that has a brand new GUI when they intend the release to use a more functional GUI that restores the full feature set and usability.

Rakesh Malik wrote:based on what the BMD product management folks have said, they planning for feature parity by the end of the beta.

Have they said that officially?

Yes.

Because it seems really, really strange that they would release a beta that has a brand new GUI when they intend the release to use a more functional GUI that restores the full feature set and usability.

That's the thing... it's not brand new. It's updated, and not everything is in there yet, and it has bugs, but it's still pretty much the same UI.

I don't know how challenging a clearly incorrect statement and then providing evidence thereof is complaining, but if you want to take it that way, it's no skin off my teeth…

Chad Capeland wrote:

Rakesh Malik wrote:based on what the BMD product management folks have said, they planning for feature parity by the end of the beta.

Have they said that officially?

I haven't seen anything that said that officially. But in informal conversations, representatives (and by that I mean product management and engineers, not marketing) have said that the goal is for Fusion in Resolve to do everything Fusion itself can do, and better, so that it no longer becomes the case that anyone would want to work in standalone Fusion.

Whether that happens by the end of Resolve 15's beta cycle or not was not stated. It will take as long as it takes, and if they get to a point where they have everything existing Resolve users need but not everything that VFX users need, I imagine they might call that good enough for Resolve 15.0, and feature parity might wait until a point release, or even Resolve 16.

Getting back to the actual topic of this thread, the aforementioned conversation indicated that there will be more engagement from the Resolve product team now that Fusion is in their bailiwick. They didn't want to tip their hand by jumping into conversations here before the announcement. I hope we'll start seeing better engagement once they're back in the office next week.

even though we all know that BMD wants to know what everyone using its software thinks of it.

How do *we* all know this? There is still no way to directly engage with support. There is no standard way of providing info. There is no timeline or planning and no announcements (officially) what their intentions are.

Let me be clear: It's pretty obvious that they're not abondoning Fusion - you don't invest a considerate amount of time and resources to integrate a whole new piece of software into Resolve if you're not interested - and in that sense I'm optimistic, but there are a couple of things they could've done to make it work better for *all* involved. There are still some serious issues with Fusion that trip people up from time to time. If those could have been fixed before the integration, the Resolve Beta would have been more stable. With the good stuff, you also get the bad.Now you have a public beta that's both beta from a user's perspective (hey, what does this button do?) and from a technical perspective (hey, why does it crash when I do X?) but since the only way to try the beta is by uninstalling your previous - presumably well functioning - version of the software, it has to be production ready in a sense as well. It's a massive undertaking and without a sturdy bug tracker and checklist of things already mentioned, being a good beta tester isn't easy.

Just to throw in my 2 cents on behalf of users and to add to the very good points raised by the software people here - over the last three decades I have seen many attempts to combine various media disciplines into one "uber app" that handles editing, vfx, grading, sound etc. The Softimage studio effort comes to mind, also the Autodesk attempt, now the Foundry seems to be having a go. It seems to be something that software company management usually arrives at after a period developing and supporting separate applications.

Speaking as someone who uses some of these apps to make a living (as opposed to selling these apps to make a living) I've seen that there is always one major problem.

The various disciplines involved are extremely specialised, albeit with some crossover. A feature film editor might use Fusion (or AE or whatever) to rough out temps for his edit, but the real shots will be done by a VFX artist. A VFX artist might be capable of driving an editing package - Lightworks, Premiere, Resolve (in my case) or whatever - but he's not very likely to get a job editing a feature film. And neither of them is going to be doing the final audio mix. Etc.

As such these all-in-one uber apps tend to usually end up being used by hobbyists or very small shops doing perhaps worthy but low budget projects, and eventually they all seem to end up being discontinued.

High end pros want and need their tools to be optimised for their own discipline. Implying that shoe horning another disciplines' tool set into one package somehow turns an Editor user into a top flight VFX designer or vice versa shows a somewhat warped (and to be honest slightly insulting, even if well meant) view of the industry. Productions don't hire editing systems - in most cases they couldn't care less what software or hardware is used. They hire the Editor, or the VFX Supervisor, or the Dubbing mixer or whatever, on the basis of their creative skills. And these artists need tools that help them best utilize their particular specialist skill set.

So - admittedly in reference to larger scale production - a reduced feature set version of Fusion in Resolve would be great for temps, rough concept work and other such things and would probably be more used by editorial departments than anyone else. But if that draws resources away from maintaining (and debugging!) the stand alone software then the stand alone will be in big trouble in the marketplace. And it's hard to see how this wouldn't happen.

Fusion is only now starting to make some small inroads into some of the major shops. Many of them are trying it out and seeing how it can fit into pipelines. But if BlackMagic doesn't clearly state that the stand alone will continue to be developed and supported (and quickly sort out some of the current major problems, the version 9 OpenCL stuff being top of the list!) then these inroads will soon disappear.

And, frankly, editorial depts tend to be a handful of people. VFX artists used on major projects can run to hundreds of seats. I would urge BM to consider that . . .

Rakesh Malik wrote:BMD has been saying that it's 1/3 of the way through what the product management team predicted would be an 18 month project.

Wow. With all this uproar I thought the beta you guys were looking at was a release candidate due to ship any day now, not a new development project less than halfway done.

For those not in the software biz, an 18 month estimate from project management is actually 36 in dog years (or reality, depending on your confidence in canines). If the estimate is from marketing it'll be closer to 12 but will be missing 75% of the promised features when it's released.

And by the way, this is why software companies don't talk to users about their plans. We get yelled at if we promise 18 and deliver in 36, promise 12 and deliver incomplete crap, or for not promising anything at all.

You think directors are an unrealistic and demanding lot? Try writing software for a living.

Wow. With all this uproar I thought the beta you guys were looking at was a release candidate due to ship any day now, not a new development project less than halfway done.

Like I said: since this beta actively *deletes* your previous version, you don't have another choice but use it as a release candidate. If it's less than halfway done: don't release it. Especially if you know that it's not ready for actual use yet.

Right now this feels like:

'Hey, here's your car. It doesn't have any wheels yet, but it does come with a steering wheel. Let us know what you think about the upholstery.'

I am not a very advanced user in Fusion - even though I've used it for 20+ years now - but I couldn't do a single thing I'm used to in the full version of Fusion. It's likeley that this has to do for a big part with the fact that I don't understand how Resolve works, but it's also because some common sense things that would've been great to have inside ReFusion aren't there yet.

Bryan Ray wrote:Um… it's nothing like the one in Fusion 9. Fusion lets you open any number of floating frames into which you can place whichever View you want.

Resolve is definitely capable of floating frames as evidenced by the scopes and a new video viewer floating window option in Fairlight. Hopefully it's just a matter of time before that is implemented for Fusion as well.

Yikes. I must have missed that while reading this thread. Curious choice to make when releasing a beta.

There's no way I'd install a test version of Visual Studio if it deleted the production release. By definition, beta stands for Bugs Expected To Appear and thus it's not something you can trust for getting work done.

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:You actually do have a choice -- don't use it at all.

That would certainly be my choice if I had to depend on a working version.

However, in fairness to those brave souls who do it anyway, the only way to give BMD input on the beta and contribute to a better ultimate release is to, you know, install the beta. At which point your work is at risk if you depend on it. Constantly uninstalling / reinstalling isn't practical when it's a professional environment.

So, the pros who could offer some very valuable feedback have to make a high risk choice if they want to participate. That's a tough position to put them in.

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:For anyone interested to check it out the steps are simple:

1. Backup your database.

2. Install R15 and check it out.

3. If you don't like it, re-instally R14 and import your backed up database.

People who forego step 1 and are now stuck with R15 really have no right to complain.

Yeah. Well, in my opinion if you want to be serious about beta testing, you have to be able to do it side by side with a stable release, so that you can jump back to your previous version if you find a showstopping bug.Most software will let you do this. Blender for example. You can have daily builds installed for the latest and greatest *and* use the stable releases. This makes it much more enticing to install a beta and work with it.

Sander de Regt wrote:Most software will let you do this. Blender for example. You can have daily builds installed for the latest and greatest *and* use the stable releases. This makes it much more enticing to install a beta and work with it.

I gotta tell you that as beta tester for way more apps and plugins that I can even remember, that is not a luxury that I have been afforded typically.

There is a reason why some apps like Houdini and Blender allow for multiple versions to co-exist at the same time, but in my experience that is more of a rarity than the norm. I am sure that BMD is not overwriting previous versions just to be dicks, there must be a legitimate reason why they can't.

Having said that, I have to go back to my initial point that nobody is forcing users to update. If someone wants to, they can keep using Resolve 9 with absolutely no sweat off of BMD's back.

Personally I am opposed to so-called "public betas" as they only invite more problems than they are worth. A private beta team comprised of a wide enough sample of testers is a better option IMHO.

As a new user to Fusion, I’m honestly very surprised about the approach BMD has taken. Coming from tools like Houdini, Redshift, Mari, Substance, Nuke, etc where the parent company (SideFX, Redshift, Allegorithmic, Foundry) are very present with the community, training (getting tools into universities, holding webinars, attending conventions, etc), and marketing makes Fusion/BMD look terrible in comparison. Granted, many of these tools have higher price tags as well as recurring payment options in contrast to the once and done vibe of Fusion. Even Autodesk is doing better in terms of support in my experience.

I seriously applaud your efforts on the multi-OS ports (I’m a linux user) and the 3D Tracker addition. But there has been not a single word in 6 months (Dec 21, 2017) in regards to what’s going on with Fusion. No marketing, public webinars showing why Fusion is a great tool, no active pushing to get Fusion into more locations. Nothing to get us excited for the products future. Did you put the entire dev team into the Resolve task?

I don’t think any paying user would have a problem of paying more if it meant that BMD would be more present in terms of supporting Fusion. Assuming you want to stick with the $300 price tag for studio, add something like maintenance, or an opt in subscription for better access to the dev team. Whatever you do will be cheaper than the competition (ala Nuke). Anything to provide a better revenue stream to allow BMD to properly support and maintain Fusion in a more public manner.

Software companies have to be careful with what they say to customers, that’s been covered already in this thread. But saying nothing and not properly supporting your tool is not the right answer. And leaving it up to the community to support itself is just throwing salt in the wound.

I really hope BMD takes notice and changes the way they’re doing things. As a student, I bought Fusion as a long term play for a personal compositing package, and all I want is for Fusion to succeed. I really hoped that there would be significant development since the Eyeon falter. Assuming we do see Fusion 10 released at some point, if it’s only a face lift to match Resolve 15 without any other major work going into it, you’re not giving yourself a good platform to grab new users which is the only way to gain profit with the current model. Fusion is a specialty package, treat it as such and you’ll see an opening in probably the largest market of CG/post-production.

Blake LaFarm wrote:Although this has all been said before, by many of us, you did a very good job of articulating the problem.

I find that to be a pleasant surprise, I’m usually horrific at explaining myself or a topic, particularly on a phone.

But to the topic at hand: as a user, no matter how much I enjoy using a product, I cannot in good conscience recommend people dish out any form of capital or investment for a tool that is supposedly being developed if there doesn’t seem to be a team behind it. It’s not good business, and it’s not good for relations. Please, do something about this! There’s a huge market just waiting for solid competition and Fusion should be that tool. Being more accessible, forthcoming, and customer oriented is a necessary step for this to happen.

Current pricing model of "pay once (if pay at all), free forever" directly means that market is kind of irrelevant. There won't be any money for development and marketing whatever the user size is if one does not ask any money. Also the vibe of closed source free software is a whole lot different than open source free, because community is unable to actively help fix bugs in code (posting crash logs in forum is not it).